As a counterpoint, I always book through 3rd party sites and have literally never had a problem. They are consistently like 20% cheaper than booking directly, and that’s the minimum. I’ve literally stayed at 5 star hotels for less than half the cost they charge on their own site.

And calling? Are you kidding? Do you think this is pre-2020 or something? The overworked, underpaid person at the front desk does not give a single fuck if you found a cheaper price elsewhere. Or you get routed to a call center for the hotel chain where someone reads a script at you for 8 minutes before finally revealing the price, which is always the exact same as the one on their website. This seems to be the universal experience as it’s the same regardless of if it’s a fancy place or a dirt cheap hostel. You might as well be asking if they’d be willing to install a football field in your room. The response is always a firm no with confusion on why you would even bother asking for such a thing.

Probably less than the number that decided enforcing an oppressive style of dress wasn’t worth the hassle when faced with minimal societal pressure.

Republicans.

readily replaceable

I think the last time they tried this showed just how NOT replaceable they are. Every alternative lacks critical features or is still so deep in development that a workable, scalable product is still years away. And that’s not even touching the difficulty of getting people to move.

People switched from mumble and teamspeak to discord because it offered more features and worked better in all but a few edge cases. In the years since, nothing else has been developed that even comes close to matching all the things it does. If you think it’s as simple as slapping together a VoIP program with a chat feature, you are vastly underestimating what every day users would want.

I don’t even think they can be called performatively better than google. Has google personally gifted Trump tacky golden shit? Feels like apple has kissed the ring a lot more.

Yea, and the internet will never go mainstream. I also heard Apple developed this new product called the iPhone, what a stupid idea that no one will buy, people will just stick with regular cell phones when given the choice. Now excuse me while I ride off on my horse that will never, ever, be replaced by these new au-to-mo-biles.

See, I can do it too.

People who are vehemently against any form of AI will be left behind. That may be difficult to hear, and even more difficult to accept, but that is the cold, hard, truth.

Its a tool, and just like any tool it has uses. It can be used inappropriately, and it’s valid to criticize those instances. But if you are plugging your ears and going “Lalala!” when people talk about actual valid use cases, or stubbornly pretending that it has none, you will be left behind.

You will be like office employees from the 80’s and 90’s who refused to use a computer and then suddenly found themselves without a job. It’s your choice if you use it or not. It’s also every company’s choice to not hire you because of your unwillingness to adapt.

If you haven’t learned it yet, this is your warning and your wake-up call: Learn how to use AI now, or find a different career. It’s not going away, no matter how much you may bitch and moan. There will soon be two classes of people, those who learned how to use this emerging technology, and those who refused. Things will be much harder for that second group.

I don’t say this to be snarky or smug. I hate AI myself, but I also recognize how fucking stupid I’d have to be to refuse to use it. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s also the truth.

That’s not how AI works. The people claiming that AI models have to be trained on CP to make CP have a fundamental misunderstanding of how image generation models work.

If I ask an AI model to make an image of a sexy air fryer fucking a sexy, anthropomorphic, ear of corn, it will produce said image. I promise it was not trained on sexy images of air fryers fucking sexy anthropomorphic ears of corn.

That’s what makes AI so dangerous and difficult to regulate. We are not ready for this technology to be in the hands of everyone.

Seems like a straightforward solution to a simple problem. Pretty direct correlation with kids having access to smartphones vs declining grades and attention spans.

In schools that have started simply not allowing phones in class, grades have improved. This seems like the next logical step. Its basically just returning to pre-smartphone days. Schools used to confiscate phones if you had them out at all during school hours.

People will disagree with simple solutions, but those are often the ones that works. Phones cause problems, get rid of phones. Simple and direct.

And fucking golf?

Oh no! A 3 month low! 3 months, practically a lifetime. Yes sir, I’m sure that millions of people only started investing during these 3 months and are really hurting right now instead of facing a short-term loss in the face of over a decade of profits.

I’m surprised no one has said AllTrails since it’s one of the biggest. Is there something bad about that app I’m unaware of?

Are news outlets even fucking real at this point? How can they seriously post shit like this when everyone has been witness to the last 4 months? It’s like putting out an article every day that the sun is considering setting and then putting a new one out every night saying it’s considering rising.

Trump has been flip-flopping on Iran CONSTANTLY for 4 months. Sometimes multiple times in the same day. A few times even in the same sentence. This isnt a news story, it’s a fucking joke

At that point, just have spray paint on a stick. Or better, just a long paint roller.

What’s it like waking up every morning with the most dog-shit takes imaginable?

It’s still free though?

Maybe if you’re mentally ill.

The man who killed John Lennon did so because he was convinced that The Catcher in the Rye was telling him to do so. Do we blame The Catcher in the Rye? Or do we recognize that the guy had underlying mental issues and anything could have set him off?

Sure, I suppose one could come to that conclusion if they were an idiot.

Deserve? No. It seems like you are unaware that there is a difference between Darwinism and the Darwin Awards, because that’s a wild jump to conclusions otherwise.

A toddler doesn’t deserve to get burned because it sticks its hand in a campfire. But the solution isn’t to ban campfires in some misguided attempt to stop all toddlers everywhere from getting burned. It’s not the campfire’s fault that a toddler lacks the mental capacity to understand that sticking a limb in an open fire is bad.

You could force everyone to put toddler proof gates around their fires, or ban toddlers from camping trips, or force people to make smaller fires that toddlers won’t get as hurt by if they stick their hand in it… Or, you could recognize that it’s up to the parents to prevent things like that; that the vast majority of toddlers won’t stick their hand in fire.

Maybe you don’t agree. Maybe you feel banning campfires is justified to prevent mentally deficient toddlers from hurting themselves. Just know that even if you succeed, toddlers will still find ways to hurt themselves, so you’re not really preventing much of anything by banning the fires.